Photographs reflecting the poignancy and celebration, musical offerings and spoken word, of the service for naming Peter J. Gomes Chapel on Oct. 25.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/10/29/slide-show-naming-peter-jgomes-chapel/feed/0Peter Gomes ‘cherished’ the Chapel that now carries his namehttp://www.bates.edu/news/2012/10/26/peter-gomes-chapel-naming-service/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/10/26/peter-gomes-chapel-naming-service/#commentsFri, 26 Oct 2012 13:30:02 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=59803The Chapel became the Peter J. Gomes Chapel on Oct. 25 as hundreds gathered to remember the late preacher and teacher in words and song.]]>

The Bates College Chapel became the Peter J. Gomes Chapel on Oct. 25 as hundreds of friends and colleagues of the late preacher and teacher gathered to remember him in words and song.

The Rev. Jonathan Walton, Peter Gomes’ successor as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church at Harvard, delivers the sermon at the service of naming the Gomes Chapel. Photo: Mike Bradley/Bates College.

Thoughtfully programmed, the 90-minute chapel service painted a picture of the complex and beloved Gomes, one of the brightest lights in the constellation of Bates alumni. From the invocation by Bill Blaine-Wallace, multifaith chaplain at Bates, to the benediction by Emily Wright-Magoon, associate multifaith chaplain, the service established Gomes’ personal and intellectual ties to Bates, the college that he credited as a formative force in his life.

Ultimately, in the sermon of the Rev. Jonathan L. Walton, Gomes’ successor as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church at Harvard, the event situated Gomes and Bates in a greater moral landscape illuminated by faith, tenacity and hope.

“He relished this college, he cherished this chapel.”

And all this in a setting in which Gomes would likely have found much delight. “He relished this college. He cherished this chapel,” as one of the speakers, Carl Benton Straub, professor emeritus of religion and Clark A. Griffith Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, told the crowd.

Just days before the 100th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the building, its stone walls were warmed by the presence of hundreds of people steeped in deep feeling for its namesake, ornamented by pomp and spectacle, and bathed in music from Bach to Paganini to Gomes’ Harvard friend Carson Cooman.

In timing and content, the service also served as prelude to the much-anticipated inauguration of A. Clayton Spencer as Bates’ eighth president on Oct. 26. Bates trustees, active and retired, were on hand for the naming, as were three of Spencer’s predecessors as Bates president: Donald Harward, Elaine Hansen and Nancy Cable, whose term as interim president directly preceded Spencer’s.

A handful of the delegates who will represent different educational institutions at Spencer’s installation were also in attendance. And the service highlighted the Bates-Harvard bond embodied by Gomes and now by Bates’ new president, who served Harvard for 15 years, most recently as vice president for policy. In addition to Walton, that little school down the road in Cambridge also sent the Rev. Wendel W. Meyer, associate minister for administration in The Memorial Church to Bates to speak.

Also among the Harvard contingent was violinist Ryu Goto, Harvard ’11, a Deutsche Grammophon recording artist whose virtuosic rendition of a work by Paganini seemed to capture in sound the diverse dimensions of Gomes’ character.

Courage, intelligence, delight, generosity, and humility.

If Straub provided the closest focus on Gomes’ time at Bates, it was Meyer who gave us the closest analysis of his character. The eloquent Meyer cited five qualities that he associates with his former colleague: courage, intelligence, delight, generosity, and humility — and founded on and enabled by a profound Christian faith.

The scripture reading for the service was Hebrews 12:1, which exhorts the reader to cast off impediments and run before the eyes of a “cloud of witnesses” who have made that same journey.

In his sermon, Walton built a long and masterful rhetorical arc from his relationship with President Spencer, through past Bates presidents and other central figures, to the inspirational story of injured Olympic runner Derek Redmond hobbling across the finish line with his father by his side — and finally brought it home by reminding his listeners of the lesson from Ecclesiastes that the race is not given to the swift nor the strong, but to him or her who endures to the end.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/10/26/peter-gomes-chapel-naming-service/feed/0Gomes collection, reflecting intimacy with the past, offered March 24http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/03/13/gomes-collection/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/03/13/gomes-collection/#commentsTue, 13 Mar 2012 21:13:29 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=52913A conception of God's beauty as expressed in the physical world is a theme of items to be offered at auction from the collection of the Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes '65.]]>

A conception of God’s beauty as expressed in the material world is a theme of items to be offered at auction from the collection of the Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes ’65, at noon Saturday, March 24.

The dining room at Oceanside, the home of Peter Gomes '65 in his hometown of Plymouth, Mass.

The 550-lot collection features a discerning array of 18th- and 19th-century American and English art, books and furniture from Gomes’ Harvard residence, Sparks House, and from Oceanside, his home in Plymouth, Mass.

Gomes, who died Feb. 28, 2011, was the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard. He was a famous preacher, bestselling author and beloved member of the Harvard, Plymouth and Bates communities.

“Making a place for me in my times.”

A passionate collector and historic preservationist who embraced the past as a touchstone for today, Gomes was a man who “cared about history in a way that was quite intimate,” said his Harvard faculty colleague Diana Eck last year.

In 1997, he explained to House and Garden magazine that collecting historical items was not about “making a place for the ages” but instead “a place for me in my times.”

Peter Gomes '65 used this early 19th-century silver tea service to offer his famous Wednesday afternoon teas at Sparks House.

From a personal and theological perspective, he continued, “I do believe that God is the author of beauty. It is not beauty that distracts us from the love of God. It is beauty that affirms the presence of God. This [collecting] is not the worship of the material. This is using the gifts of God for the people of God.”

“That sentiment, about seeing God’s beauty and about appreciating the minutiae of God’s work, is straight out of the Renaissance,” observes Nancy Carlisle ’77, senior curator of collections at Historic New England, the region’s venerable historic preservation and heritage organization. In 2005, she curated and wrote the catalog for Historic New England’s acclaimed Cherished Possessions exhibition and is the author of the book America’s Kitchens.

Grounded in times and places of which Gomes was famously fond, the collection is hardly modern and hardly eclectic — but that does not mean he was a narrow collector, Carlisle says.

“One type of collector might dogmatically recreate an 18th-century period room at its most symmetrical and high style,” Carlisle says. “But I don’t think that was Peter Gomes.”

Rather, suggests Carlisle, the Gomes collection reflects his “rootedness.” He surrounded himself with beautiful and historic things that “anchored him in the world in which he grew up and lived. What he collected he deeply appreciated both spiritually and intellectually.

Seen here is Peter Gomes' living room at his Harvard residence, Sparks House.

“There are people who live in their heads and collect in their heads. But through the items he collected, Gomes was deeply invested in beauty and comfort and the world around him.”

There is, for example, Lot 110, an early 19th-century silver tea service by Lewis & Smith of Philadelphia, which Gomes used during his famous Wednesday afternoon teas at Sparks House. The gatherings hosted by Gomes, The Harvard Crimson wrote, were among the “hidden gems of Harvard life…[offering] students an opportunity to mingle with the university’s most colorful luminaries and eccentrics.”

Items from Oceanside include a George III inlaid mahogany secretary bookcase; a 19th-century English School portrait of a gentleman reading New Monthly Magazine; and an extensive collection of Chinese export porcelain and Canton blue and white porcelain.

In both residences, the Gomes collection boasts a large selection of English School and American School ancestral portraits and landscapes; 18th- and 19th-century English engravings of historical, theological and royal subjects; books focusing on similar themes; and numerous decorations, mirrors, chandeliers and lighting, garden furniture and statuary.

This fall, Bates will celebrate the naming of the college chapel in memory of Peter Gomes. A former Bates trustee and recipient of the Benjamin Elijah Mays Medal, the college’s highest honor, Gomes included Bates as one of the beneficiaries of his estate.

The auction exhibition opens March 21 and continues until the auction begins at noon March 24. Grogan and Co. is located at 22 Harris St., Dedham, Mass.

Worland quotes Bates multifaith chaplain Bill Blaine-Wallace, who said that “Peter Gomes is adored still at Bates. He so loved this college. Having a friend like Peter certainly made me feel blessed.”

The story quotes Gomes’ sermon at the 2010 Alumni Memorial Service at Reunion: “True reunion is not just a meeting of those who may be walking around, but is that reconnection with those whom we do not see, whom we do not hear, but whose names we know.”

The chapel’s official dedication in Gomes’ memory will occur in the spring.

Despite its 14 feet of height and 500 pounds of weight, a copper cupola seemed surprisingly delicate as a crane hoisted it back into place atop the College Chapel’s southeast tower on June 9.

Workers from Consigli Construction of Portland, general contractor for the nine-month Chapel restoration project, guided the hovering green cupola toward its base. It looked a little like an octopus, consisting of a dome — more pointy than the usual octopus, true — and eight sheet-copper “legs” hanging down.

The southeast unit was the second to be restored to its base, about 75 feet up. Each of the legs, which are a little wobbly when the cupola is floating, had to be guided onto a wooden upright, not unlike putting trousers onto the octopus. The crane set the thing down very slowly.

The $2 million restoration, which began in late March, also involves complete replacement of the Chapel’s slate roof and extensive masonry repair on the towers and buttresses. (The main walls and stained glass windows need work, too, but that will have to wait for a new infusion of money.)

The first phase of the exterior restoration of the 97-year-old building, says project manager Greg Hogan, is needed largely to repair water damage that has occurred since the last masonry overhaul in the mid-1950s. Moisture filtering down between the inner and outer masonry envelopes, or wythes, leached the adhesive components out of the mortar masonry joints. “In places there was nothing left but the sand” that gives mortar its bulk, Hogan says.

Some damage, ironically, resulted from attempts to keep water out. For instance, 60 or 70 years ago flashing was installed on the dormer roofs to protect concrete ridge pieces. But water instead got under the flashing and soaked the concrete. Natural freeze-thaw cycles worked with the moisture to speed up the deterioration and cause the concrete to fail prematurely, Hogan says.

The corner towers have water issues of their own. In the winter, moisture from the building interior got into the towers, condensed onto the unheated walls and froze into giant icicles, damaging the walls. Now, fans are being installed that will trip on automatically to pull in outside air and equalize the temperature and humidity.

As for the cupolas themselves, the copper had holes that needed patching, and pressure-treated wood replaced the plain wooden frames that had succumbed to time and dampness. The worst damage was to the tower tops where the cupolas sit: on the southeast tower, about four feet of masonry had to be rebuilt, with a new cap of rubber and copper sealing it up.

Three years shy of its 100th birthday, the Bates College Chapel will be the object of a new construction project this year — starting next week, in fact. For the next nine months, workers will be replacing the venerable building’s slate roof and tending to the turrets at each corner. Read more about the Chapel repairs.

Three years shy of its 100th birthday, the Bates College Chapel will be the object of a new construction project this year — starting next week, in fact.

For the next nine months, workers will be replacing the venerable building’s slate roof and tending to the turrets at each corner.

Despite the staging that will surround the building from March 28 into December, though, the Chapel will remain open for business during the repairs. Note, however, that “it could be noisy inside there,” says Pam Wichroski, the college’s director of capital planning and construction. Of course, construction will pause during signature College events.

“A lot of the Chapel activities take place evenings and weekends, so the construction shouldn’t impact those.”

On the turrets, the copper cupolas will be removed, their metalwork repaired, and reinstalled. In addition, masons will redo the mortar joints between the Quincy granite wall stones, a chore that could involve removing and resetting stones where the mortar is too far gone. The building’s walls also need such retooling, but that will come in a second, as-yet-unscheduled phase of the project.

The roofing work, meanwhile, will be comprehensive. Original to the building, the roof “has basically reached its end of life,” Wichroski says. “We’re starting to see water infiltration into the building,” particularly in the turrets and in the choir loft, where plaster has been damaged.

“They’re taking all of the old slate off, right down to the wood roofing. They’ll repair any problems that they find in the wood, put new underlayment down and new slate on top of that.” The copper flashing at the seams and edges will be replaced, too.

Slate is one of the most durable roof coverings, not to mention the classiest, and the lifespan of the Chapel roof is right in the ballpark, according to a National Park Service website that gives 60-125 years as a typical length of service. The site also notes that 1914, when the Chapel was finished, marked the end of the boom in slate roofing in the U.S., as less expensive materials entered the market.

The cost of slate remains an issue. When Bates reroofed Alumni Gym and the Gray Cage last year, the sheer expanse needing to be covered ruled out the idea of replacing the old slate with new. Asphalt shingles went onto the roofs instead. “It’s always a tough decision,” Wichroski says.

After a full minute, Helen Archambault, a longtime resident of College Street and widow of a member of the Class of 1940, rose from her pew and spoke. “Peter Gomes was a joyous man,” she said. “I just loved him.”

Gomes, friend of many and a brilliant preacher, influential author and principled religious voice in America, died Feb. 28 at age 68. He was the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. A College-wide memorial service at Bates is being planned for a future date.

The first was by Carl Benton Straub, professor emeritus of religion and the Clark A. Griffith Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies. Straub, too, said he was feeling tentative about adding words to the Gomes legacy.

“What can we say in simplicity about this complex man?” he asked. “What syllables can condense his journey? What reading deserves to break the silence to join the music he relished?”

Answering his question, Straub quoted Gomes’ friend Diana Eck, the Harvard religion and Indian studies professor, who said last week that Gomes was “on speaking terms with generations of the dead.” Straub said that Gomes use those conversations as a way “to call upon past generations’ vision and vitality to discipline the present and to deter it from running off course.”

Straub offered two readings that allowed mourners to “listen in” on conversations from 17th-century Puritan society, “a generation that was especially treasured by Gomes.”

Straub read Samuel Sewall’s 1697 tribute to Plum Island, off the coast of Newburyport, Mass. Sewall’s tribute is full of place names as he “sings the constancy of nature as assurance of the continuity of faith”:

As long as Plum island shall faithfully keep the commanded Post, Notwithstanding the hectoring words and hard blows of the proud and boisterous ocean; As long as any Salmon or Sturgeon shall swim in the streams of Merrimack, or any Perch or Pickeril in Crane Pond…. As long as Nature shall not grow old and dote, but shall constantly remember to give the rows of Indian Corn their education by Pairs; So long shall Christians be born there and being first made meet, shall from thence be translated to be made partakers of the Saints of Light.

Straub then read a poem by Anne Bradstreet in which she employs a common Puritan tactic of a sea voyage as metaphor for life and afterlife:

He that is to sail into a far country, although the ship, cabin, and provision be all convenient and comfortable for him, yet he hath no desire to make that his place of residence, but longs to put in at that port where his business lies. A Christian is sailing through this world…must beware of desiring to make this the place of his abode, lest he meet with such tossings that may cause him to long for shore before he sees land. We must, therefore, be here as strangers and pilgrims…and wait all the days of our appointed time till our change shall come.

The second readings were by Bill Hiss ’66, a contemporary and close friend of Gomes’. Hiss spoke of Gomes’ life of “helping young people make decisions.” He read from Gomes’ book The Good Life, in which Gomes writes that young people today do “sense their own drift” in a world where many are disconnected from traditional sources of guidance, such as family, church, school and state.

Yet, Gomes writes, “young people want a good life, true happiness, and a chance to do something worth doing. They want…to live so as to leave the world a better place than the mess that they have inherited…. It is for such as these that I have written this book.”

Hiss read from Psalm 39 (“And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee”) and concluded with a 23-word poem by the late Professor Emeritus of English John Tagliabue:

The dangers
like typhoons
that stand at the Door of Love
must be given flowers
and called by the
names of the gods.

The aforementioned Helen Archambault offered the first remembrance, which included a funny story about hosting a dinner party on a rainswept night on College Street. The normally natty Gomes, in town visiting his friends Norm ’22 and Marjorie Ross ’23, arrived at the Archambaults wearing way-oversized rain gear borrowed from the Rosses. Sweeping through the door, he channeled his inner Katharine Hepburn, announcing theatrically, “Guess who’s coming to dinner!”

President Elaine Tuttle Hansen spoke of receiving a story from a Bates friend who knew first-hand of Gomes’ rehabilitation efforts following his stroke in December. The friend told of Gomes’ firm request as he entered rehabilitation: That someone get him a Bates shirt (collared, of course) that he could wear while he set about to improve his condition.

One serendipitious attendee at today’s remembrance, Eleanor Zerby Blankenbaker, reminded mourners just how far back Gomes’ contributions to Bates go.

Blankenbaker is the daughter of the late Rayborn Zerby, the noted Bates religion professor and dean of the faculty in the early 1960s, and she and her husband are in town for tonight’s Zerby Lecture in Contemporary Religious Thought. Back in April 1965, the faith-based Campus Association, with Gomes as president, created the lectureship, a signature event now, to honor Zerby upon his retirement.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2011/03/07/chapel-gomes-observance-monday/feed/0'Go Tell It on the Mountain' is theme for annual holiday celebrationhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2009/12/07/lessons-carols0/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/12/07/lessons-carols0/#commentsMon, 07 Dec 2009 21:40:07 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=15891“Go Tell It on the Mountain” is this year’s theme for the annual holiday service of lessons and carols at Bates College, starting at 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13, in the Bates College Chapel, College Street.

The event is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy, and admission is free. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

Featuring the talents of many members of the college community, the event includes musical offerings from the Bates College Choir, the Bates Gospel Choir and five student a cappella groups: the Crosstones, the Deansmen, the Manic Optimists, the Merimanders and TakeNote (the latter being a new ensemble). Also performing will be keyboardist John Corrie, Bates lecturer in music and choir director.

The service will include remarks by Carl Benton Straub, professor emeritus of religion and the Clark A. Griffith Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies; Burton M. Harris ’59, Trustee emeritus and former chair of the Board of Trustees, and President Elaine Tuttle Hansen.

Music will be offered by pianist Frank Glazer, and John Corrie will direct a choir comprising members of the Bates College community. Participants in the service will include Dr. Helen A. Papaioanou ’49, Trustee emerita; the Rev. Bill Blaine-Wallace, multifaith chaplain; and the Rev. Frank Strasburger, interim rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Newcastle, Maine.